William decided that all things considered it was best to make a day of it.

[Illustration:  WILLIAM’S SPIRITS SANK A LITTLE AS HE APPROACHED THE GATE.  HE COULD SEE THROUGH THE TREES THE FAT CARAVAN-OWNER GESTICULATING AT THE DOOR.]

He spent part of the afternoon in throwing stones at a scarecrow.  His aim was fairly good, and he succeeded in knocking off the hat and finally prostrating the wooden framework.  Followed—­an exciting chase by an angry farmer.

It was after tea-time when he returned home, walking with careless bravado as of a criminal who has drunk of crime to its very depth and flaunts it before the world.  His spirits sank a little as he approached the gate.  He could see through the trees the fat caravan-owner gesticulating at the door.  Helped by the villagers, he had tracked William.  Phrases floated to him through the summer air.

“Mine beautiful caravan.... Ach....  Gott in Himmel!”

He could see the gardener smiling in the distance.  There was a small blue bruise on his shining head.  William judged from the smile that he had laid his formal complaint before authority.  William noticed that his father looked pale and harassed.  He noticed, also, with a thrill of horror, that his hand was bound up, and that there was a long scratch down his cheek.  He knew the cat had scratched somebody, but ...  Crumbs!

A small boy came down the road and saw William hesitating at the open gateway.

“You’ll catch it!” he said cheerfully.  “They’ve wrote to say you wasn’t in school.”

William crept round to the back of the house beneath the bushes.  He felt that the time had come to give himself up to justice, but he wanted, as the popular saying is, to be sure of “getting his money’s worth.”  There was the tin half full of green paint in the tool shed.  He’d had his eye on it for some time.  He went quietly round to the tool shed.  Soon he was contemplating with a satisfied smile a green and enraged cat and a green and enraged hen.  Then, bracing himself for the effort, he delivered himself up to justice.  When all was said and done no punishment could be really adequate to a day like that.

* * * * *

Dusk was falling.  William gazed pensively from his bedroom window.  He was reviewing his day.  He had almost forgotten the stormy and decidedly unpleasant scene with his father.  Mr. Brown’s rhetoric had been rather lost on William, because its pearls of sarcasm had been so far above his head.  And William had not been really loth to retire at once to bed.  After all, it had been a very tiring day.